Good News For African Mining

News last week that Mozambique will be sending electricity across the African continent, to Namibia.

The supply will come from a 122 megawatt expansion of a recently-built generation facility at Ressano Garcia, powered by natural gas.

This is a major bright spot for southern Africa. Lack of affordable electric power (or lack of power altogether) has plagued nations like South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But that appears to be changing. Major discoveries of natural gas in Mozambique have translated relatively rapidly into new gas-fired generating capacity.

This is already helping mining-focused countries. The first phase of the Ressano Garcia power plant is currently producing 110 megawatts of power that is exported to energy-hungry South Africa.

It's very encouraging that Mozambique appears capable of adding another 122 megawatts on top of this. And the fact that the developers are able to ship this energy hundreds of kilometres to Namibia shows that such power developments should theoretically be good for most of the southern continent.

Given that power availability has been one of the biggest sticking points for copper projects in the DRC, developments like this one could be game-changers. Africa has no shortage of geological riches, only issues in building the mines needed to get it out of the ground.